Advanced Web Design TeleWebCourse

The Advanced Web Design TeleWebCourse is a Web-based version of the University of Delaware’s Advanced Web Design course. Distributed by PBS, the TeleWeb version enables students to take the course over the Web in a distance-learning format.

The University of Delaware offers this course for credit as part of the educational technology degree programs, and as the capstone experience in the WebMaster Certificate program.

This course uses a dual design strategy that permits students to work either from a programmatic or a visual design perspective. Thus, both programmers and non-programmers can learn to create advanced webs.

The TeleWeb version of the course consists of the following components:

Student Jumpstart Pamphlet—introduces the course and describes how to get on the Web and get started
Online Syllabus—presents each class and paces the students through the course.
Serf Course Management—enables instructors to communicate with students, grade all of the course assignments online, and help students master the course.
Blackboard Version—produced by PBS, a Blackboard version enables institutions that have Blackboard also to deliver the course via Blackboard.
Advanced Web Design Textbook—written by Dr. Fred T. Hofstetter, the course textbook is McGraw-Hill’s Advanced Web Design, ISBN 0-07-256594-2.
Supplemental Web site—links to resources and code examples that students can freely download from the AWD Web site.

There are 14 weeks of instruction in the course. Each week, students complete classes containing both conceptual and hands-on components. In the conceptual part of the course, students learn how the Web is changing from a page-based paradigm, in which content is published in static HTML files, to an application-based model, in which screens get built on demand based on user interaction. This paradigm shift has ushered in a new generation of tools for creating advanced webs, in which relational databases keep track of what users are doing. Web applications look to these databases to generate screens dynamically depending on the needs and wants of the user. In the hands-on component, students learn how to visualize such a web, stylize its appearance, design forms to interact with users, create databases that keep track of what different users are doing, and use logic to interpret these data and make the site respond intelligently depending on what the user needs.

Grading is based on three kinds of activities. First, students get a grade for their class participation, which is done via e-mail, listserv, and online discussion forums. Second, students complete end-of-chapter exercises that demonstrate mastery of specific course content. The instructor can adjust the depth and rigor of the course by deciding which exercises to require. Third, students create an advanced web on a topic of their choosing. After the instructor approves of the topics, the students keep logs that chronicle their progress toward achieving the project's goals. If the instructor permits the students to form teams and work together on projects, these logs provide the basis for assigning individual grades for each student's contribution toward the final project.

Although there is no specific prerequisite for this course, it helps if students have had some prior experience creating Web pages, such as is provided by the PBS Internet Literacy course. Nothing essential has been left out of Advanced Web Design, however, and bright students will be able to master this material with no special preparation. The software taught in this course is Windows based. While students can use a Macintosh to access the online syllabus and participate in the course discussion forum, the students will need access to Windows in order to complete the tutorial examples.

Organization

The Advanced Web Design course has eight parts. The first four parts use Microsoft FrontPage as the development environment, and the last four parts use the Microsoft .NET Framework. Students who do not already own these products are instructed how to install free-trial versions.

Part One defines what is meant by an advanced Web and introduces the elements that an advanced Web comprises.
Part Two contains visualization exercises. Using the graphical web design tools in Microsoft FrontPage, students learn how to view and alter the structure of a web. By clicking and dragging to create webs of different shapes, students experiment with a variety of designs. With practice, students become skilled at visualizing the structure of a web.
Part Three is a scripting primer. This part of the course will help determine whether the student will be good at programming. Students who may have failed on previous attempts are encouraged to try again via this new approach to programming. The rest of the course lets the student choose whether to program or use a graphical approach to creating advanced webs.
Part Four is a tutorial on how to design and create a relational database. Data access is an essential element of advanced Web design. Regardless of whether the student chooses to work from a graphical or a programming perspective, this part of the course teaches how to make Web pages interact with databases. Programmers learn how to write scripts that interact with a database, while graphically oriented students use wizards.

The rest of the course deals with Microsoft's .NET framework. The author gives his students the option of creating their final projects either with FrontPage or with Visual Studio .NET.

Part Five introduces Microsoft’s .NET (pronounced dot-net) framework. After exploring the pre-programmed objects that come with .NET, the student learns how Active Server Pages (ASP) enable you to create dynamic Web pages using these objects. With Visual Studio, students create a simple ASP.NET project and deploy it on the Web. In so doing, students experience the power of the graphical design toolbox contained in Visual Studio .NET.
Part Six teaches how to create a more advanced Web called the Top Secret Project. It is called top secret because it enables the student to create a private portal on the Internet that can be entered only by users the student allows in. The student begins by creating a database of logons for the top secret users. Then the student creates an ASP.NET Web form that lets only these users log on. Next the student populates the web with top secret screens using controls that make it easy to update the style and shape of the web.
Behind the scenes of advanced web design, the extensible markup language (XML) gets used in important ways. Part Seven introduces XML and explains why it is important in advanced Web design. The student learns how extensible style sheets can transform XML documents into different formats at runtime. After designing an XML schema, the student experiences how an XML module can synchronize multimedia events, enrich the user experience, and make media more accessible. Then the student learns how to create a distributed application that uses an XML Web Service to exchange data over the Internet.
Advanced webs are sometimes larger or more complex than one person can create alone. Part Eight teaches how to form teams with other developers, such as classmates or co-workers. Students learn how to keep a log showing what each developer contributes to the web. To take advantage of the architecture Microsoft created for sharing code created by different project teams, the book concludes by showing students how to download and integrate third-party custom controls into the Visual Studio toolbox.

World Wide Web Site

Accompanying this book is an Advanced Web Design site created by Pat Sine. Known as the AWD Web site, it provides quick and easy access to all of the Internet resources and examples referred to in the textbook. In addition to making it easy to find things, the AWD Web site can save students a lot of time. All of the scripts in the book’s tutorials, for example, are downloadable from the AWD Web site, thereby saving the time students might otherwise spend typing the code examples.

End of Chapter Exercises

Throughout the course, end-of-chapter exercises provide practical, hands-on assignments for students to complete after each class. The instructor can adjust the depth and rigor of the course by deciding which assignments to require.